Volume 62, Issue 6 - June 2010

Keynote Address: Symposium on State Constitutions

It is a great pleasure to return once again to Stanford Law School, where in 1964 a J.D. degree launched me into a seven year legal career as a California Deputy Attorney General and what, to this point, has been an almost thirtyeight year career as a judge.

The class that I most enjoyed in law school was Constitutional Law, and I was fortunate to have Gerald Gunther as my professor. The educational experience provided by that class no doubt had a substantial bearing upon my decision to enter the field of public law.

Stimulating and comprehensive as Professor Gunther's course was, the subject of state constitutional law was rarely if ever mentioned here or elsewhere. Ultimately United States Supreme Court Justice William Brennan and my late colleague California Supreme Court Justice Stanley Mosk wrote extensively on the subject, but the focus has remained even to this day almost exclusively on the federal aspects of constitutional law...